how did you start collecting?

[brmylittleponycollector]

I started collecting at the age of 10 because I saw a collector's story on television once!  but I already had the ponies g3 and g4 and since then i started “my strange addiction” well my ponies are precious to me for being 17 years with me!  I collect them because they bring me happiness and I feel good and it's a fun hobby!  I was wondering at what age did you start collecting or how did you get the idea to collect my little pony?  or why do they collect?

[Taffeta]

That's a really awesome story! It's so neat someone inspired you like that

I had my first pony when I was almost 3. I didn't really stop so much as took a pause when I started secondary school, but while mine were in the attic, my sister was still pony age and I would play with her with hers (for her, usually). Then in 1994 I decided I might as well have mine down again. A friend gave me her ponies when she moved house, as she didn't want them any more. I wrote to Hasbro and asked them about stuff, and I corresponded with them for about a year around 1994-5. Parents discovered from a friend of my sister's parents about a clearance store in London that had a lot of old pony stock and did orders over the phone. Then one of my parents suggested we went to the local carboot sale. That was July 1995.

I went to the library to use the internet for the first time in Summer 1997. I found the Trading Post & DV. Over the course of that autumn I met my first American trade partner and printed off all of DV so I could learn about the ponies the US had that we didn't. I did my first trade in November 1997.

...And the rest is history.

[Leave a Whisper]

I've always been a horse girl and I loved MLP. My family just thought it was a good fit for me I guess, considering I never played with the dolls they bought me. I lost my G1s to a parental purge and didn't start again till G3 came out. Which got me back into collecting the originals as well.

[northstar3184]

I was a big fan in the mid 1980s and started collecting then. I had roughly 20 ponies as a kid. But my parents didn't feel a boy should collect ponies and pushed for me to sell most of them by age 8 or so via a yard sale. My appreciation for the franchise never went away, and I'd picked up a couple more ponies even after the yard sale purge. By age 11 or 12, I sold off my remaining ponies. Then G3 debuted when I was 18.  I debated taking up collecting them, but opted not to until a few after college when I finally caved in and bought a couple. After collecting G3s for a couple years, I found I missed some of my childhood G1s and found I also wanted to acquire some I'd never had as a child. Now I have about 20 or 25 G1s and about 50 or 60 G3s.

[eveningstar79]

Back in the 80s,I started collecting them as a child,I enjoyed playing with them and making up my own  world and stories with them haha   . I was crazy about anything pony or horse related,so I had my ponies and also Breyer horses(breyers not good to play with as they can break so easily I found out as a young kid). I loved the old mlp cartoons too and watched them so many times as a kid.I don’t have any of my childhood ponies anymore sadly  but I have started collecting again as an adult   

[lovesbabysquirmy]

Since 1984

[tailrustedtealeaf]

I had a short Bella Sara collecting stint, which I bet was part of the domino chain. I liked FiM and watched it on the day it first aired...I remember I was volunteering at the church's Oktoberfest, and I was worried I was going to miss the premiere. I was not a huge fan of ponies as a kid, but it would be cool to watch how the series went. I got my first toys a bit later once Bella Sara was cleared out from the shelves.

[Gator]

As a kid of the 80s, I had ponies twice.  Both times I was forced to get rid of them.  Then, around 1995-96 while traveling back and forth to college, I stopped at a flea market.  I found a Baby Yo-Yo.  Then a baby ballerina.  Then Sea Flower.  And it grew from there, discovering Dream Valley, eBay, etc.  So I guess I was about 18-19 years old and now I'm an old geezer.

[Ponybookworm]

I had Butterscotch at around 7 I think, but she remained almost alone for a time while I still liked Sindy. As time wore on Sindy grew boring (only so many variations of the same doll) & there were some Ponies for sale so I got, & didn't look back until bad things happened in my early 20s.

The years went by & I had a lot of stuff to get back so I focussed on getting hold of them first, telling myself I didn't "want" the Ponies who'd show in the charity shops. I DID get a Starshine plushie, but I was still collecting plushies. Then another bad thing happened & I needed a good cheering up. I scoured eBay for a particular pegasus poster I used to have. It wasn't there, but I got a few others, a pegasus jigsaw & a LOAD of Ponies, while also finding G3s new in the shops & the odd G1 in charity shops. Since then I've been non-stop collecting.

[LadyAmalthea]

I collected as a kid from 1985-89. Between my siblings and me, we probably had about 100 ponies and most of the 80's playsets. The collection lived at my parents' house until it came into my possession in around 2009 or so, and while I had it all, I didn't acquire anything new before bringing it back to my parents' house in 2016, thinking my niece would be interested in it. About a year ago, my mom and I were talking about it and she said she thought my sister had 'moved on from all that old stuff' and implied that she didn't want it for her daughter, and kind of hinted that my dad was anxious to purge it from their basement. I said no, don't get rid of it, I'll pick through it. But when I showed up asking about it, she handed me one box of maybe 30-40 ponies and said that's all she could find; a window well had filled up during a storm and burst, flooding the basement and a lot of stuff got thrown out by my dad and a family friend who came to help clean up, and some of it may or may not have been pony stuff. I was devastated, and became suddenly very determined to replace it all...for what purpose, I wasn't sure. So I started. I found an almost perfect Paradise Estate, and gradually started filling in the gaps.

I found that I really enjoyed the productive activity of cleaning and restoring the old childhood ponies that survived, as well as the new ones I was ordering. Plus it was neat to be able to buy ponies I had wanted as a kid but never got. I loved having them again and didn't want to give them up. Eventually more pony stuff turned up at my parents' house...including that dang Paradise Estate. I sure felt dumb! Some ponies are still awol, but there's hope they may still be there somewhere.

Incidentally, my niece as very recently taken an interest in the ponies that my mom said my sister didn't want, so I may end up having to part with some of them.

I joined this forum and I've found that my want list keeps expanding to ponies I didn't know existed back in the day...and to other generations. My son and I started watching FiM last spring, and we started collecting G4s, especially the big fashion style ones, and I've recently had my eye on some G3s, which is a can of worms money-and-storage-space-wise, but I don't know how long I can resist!

At some point along the way, I just had to admit I am a collector.

[Fizzy Scrumptious]

That's so interesting that you learned about collecting through a TV program!
 
For me, I had g3s when I was a kid, but tbh they never quite gripped me. If I still had them now, I would keep them, but nothing compelled me to keep them as I grew up, so I didn't hold onto them (still kinda kicking myself lol). When I was 12 I got really into the FiM cartoon though, and that somehow led me to stumble upon ponylandpress.com, which is G1-focused. Something about the way they present their info really hooked me, and I've been collecting ever since! ^^

I just love the organizational aspect of it (gaining and cataloguing knowledge about a niche thing is somewhat comforting). And the G1 designs please me the most so I guess that's why I mostly collect them! ^^

[Marshie]

I only recently got into collecting old generations!
I got into MLP in high school with G4, watched the show and was part of the fandom, whole package. I ended up falling out of it by senior year (~17 years old for those outside of the US), only to get back into MLP in college, when I was about 20. I'm 22 now and ended up falling in LOVE with G1 ponies! I got my first one during COVID and have gotten close to 10 now! I enjoy restoring them and bringing less fortunate ponies back to their prime, almost giving them a fresh start one life.

[brightberry]

In the 80s, just days after “Rescue at Midnight Castle” premiered, a friend of mine got ponies for her birthday.  I was so in love with them.

I didn’t know I would become a collector. It started with only wanting a few.  I had no idea that they would keep making ponies for 10 more years.  In fact, at one point I lost track of all the new releases because my family moved and we didn’t live close to any stores or see a lot of TV.  I kept all my ponies (about 20) on my dresser though.

[Barnacle_lady]

I got my first ponies in the 80s and played with them when I was about 7 to 14 years old. Due to circumstances I had to move out to a place where I could not bring my ponies along. So my grandparents stocked them for me.
In my twenties I had my own apartment and it was time to embrace them again. And online I found all the ponies I never had as a child. It was also the period that G3 was due to be released. Since then I never stopped collecting. 

[Mrs. Prospector]

I grew up with G3, and I discovered them when some kid brought some to the pool and I thought they were cute. My uncle got me Rainbow Dash in 2004, and at the end of 2007, when I was basically done with ponies, I had over 30, but I had to downsize to 10 or so when I outgrew them a few years later. I became invested in the FIM fandom in 2014, and rediscovered G3 as well as the oldest generations. I didn't get any new additions to my collection until last year, and my collection is very small because as a college student, my space/money is pretty limited.